Bitsy
by Seshat0120
Summary: Sam leaps in 10 year old TommyLee Ritchey who’s wandered off from his grandparents home. It’s up to Al and TommyLee’s dog, Bitsy to see that Sam survives to the morning when rescuers will find him or Sam will suffer the same fate as TommyLee.
1. Chapter 1

**Bitsy**

_by Seshat0120_

_Disclaimer: Quantum Leap and all related characters are owned by Belisarius Productions and Universal. No profit has been made off of the writing or distribution of this piece of fiction._

The leap-ins were always the most disorienting thing. It always took just a few seconds for Sam to orient himself to where he was and what he was doing but he could count on one hand – and have fingers left over – the amount of times he actually got those few seconds. This particular leap-in wasn't one of them.

As fast as the blue-white corona of light faded he felt himself slipping and falling. It wasn't a far fall but it was a shocking landing when he came to a stop with his body partially lying in the very cold water of a quick-running creek. "Oh boy," he moaned as he pulled himself up the bank and out of the water. He repeated it again when a cold wind blew against his body causing him to shiver.

Climbing to his feet he looked around trying to figure out where he was. From the looks of things, he was in the woods somewhere and there was no one else in sight. "Hello?" he called out tentatively hoping someone would answer him back. Unfortunately, no one did.

Another cold wind blew and he wrapped his arms around himself shivering. Judging by the look of the foliage on the trees, or lack thereof, he judged it to be late fall…and it was cold. The jeans he had on were soaked through from his plunge in the creek and the light jacket he had on wasn't doing much to cut the cold wind. He knew if he didn't find some kind of shelter soon, he'd be in a world of hurt. "Hello?" he called out again as he turned a slow circle. The only sound that reached his ears in response to his call was the rustle of the leaves on the tree. "Al?" he tried in a softer voice. "Al, hurry up 'cause I don't know where I am or what to do."

A lesson from his Boy Scout days that had been drilled into him suddenly popped into his mind. "If you ever get lost in the woods, don't wander around," he murmured. "Stay in one spot until someone finds you." Heeding the advice he'd been given as a child, he sat down on the ground with his back braced against a tree to wait for Al or someone to find him. "Hurry up," he again entreated as once more the wind blew and he shivered.

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"What do you have for me?" Al asked as soon as Verbena had come out of the waiting room. It was the first thing he almost always seemed to say to her in these moments.

"Not much," Verbena answered as she led Al to the observation room adjacent to the waiting room. Through its two-way mirror, she'd be able to observe the current occupant of Sam's aura. "I've got a name and an age and that's it. He says his names TommyLee Ritchey and he's 10 years old but that's it." The two of them stopped and looked in at the person currently in the waiting room. To Verbena's eyes, it was Sam Beckett who was sitting wrapped up in a ball rocking back and forth in a corner of the room. When Al looked he saw a boy, a bit small for the reported age of 10. A shock of dark brown, untidy hair heightened the creamy appearance of the child's skin. What they both saw was someone who was, quite obviously, terrified.

"It's a start," Al told her. "At least I can tell Sam who he is." He directed his attention up to the ceiling. "Ziggy, can you lock on to Sam yet?"

"I've just established a lock on Dr. Beckett now," the sultry-voiced computer reported. Al was taken aback that Ziggy wasn't playing any of her usual games with him. Her next words explained why. "You should hurry, Admiral. Dr. Beckett's vital signs are showing that he's quite distressed."

"I'm on my way," Al called out as he left the observation room at a run. Everyone within hearing distance of Ziggy's voice and in Al's path to the Imaging Chamber knew better than to do anything but push as far over to the wall as possible until after Al had made his mad dash past them.

Reaching the Control Room, he grabbed the handlink from the table that was a larger version of it and didn't stop his mad dash until he was at the top of the ramp waiting for the Imaging Chamber door to open. "Center me on Sam," he ordered as soon as the door opened and he'd entered.

In the wink of an eye, Al was transported from the blue walls of the Imaging Chamber to a wooded area. Looking around, he spotted Sam sitting against a tree close by and jogged over to him. "Oh, thank God, Sam. Ziggy said you were in some kind of trouble but you look ok."

Sam's head jerked up at the sound of Al's voice. "Al! Oh God, Al. I am in trouble. I don't know where I am or what to do. What do I do Al?"

"Whoa, whoa, slow down. You just got here, that's why you don't know what to do." He pulled the handlink up in front of his face and started to poke at the colored buttons. "Let's see what Ziggy can tell us."

He slapped the handlink on the side and shook it when it didn't immediately start to provide the information that Sam needed. "Ok, we know your name's TommyLee Ritchey and your 10 years old."

Sam looked up at him expectantly. "Ok. So that's who I am but where is everyone."

"What?" Al asked looking around and it was only then he realized Sam was the only person in sight…and he'd leaped into a 10 year old kid. Who let a 10-year-old kid wander the woods alone?

"Where is everyone?" Sam reiterated. "I haven't seen anyone since I leaped in and that wasn't pleasant 'cause I lost my balance and fell into that creek over there and now I'm wet and cold."

Al was staring intently at the handlink again; giving it a shake every now and then. "Oh Sam, this doesn't look too good." Ziggy was finally providing the needed information. "It's November 27, 1980. Hey, it's Thanksgiving." Seeing the narrow eyed look Sam gave him, Al went on imparting the necessary information. "Ok, you know who you are and when you are how about where you are."

"That would be nice to know," Sam commented trying to stop his teeth from chattering.

"Well, you're somewhere just outside of Oswego, NY."

"Where outside of Oswego?" Sam asked Al to clarify. "And what am I doing here?"

"You're lost," Al stated plainly.

"I know that, Al," Sam agreed. He brought his knees up to his chest hugging them close for whatever warmth he could find.

Al dropped down to a squat so that he could be on eye level with Sam. "I don't think you understand, Sam. TommyLee was lost when you leaped in. He wandered away from his grandparents' house on the morning of November 27. He wasn't found until the next morning." Al looked from the handlink to Sam, the look on his face mournful. "He was dead when they found him…from hypothermia."

Sam could only gape at Al's pronouncement. The way he was feeling, he wasn't that far from following in TommyLee's footsteps and doing absolutely nothing to change history. "So I'm here to make sure he gets found before that happens? How am I supposed to do that? I don't know where I am or which way to go."

"I don't know, Sam," Al confessed as he fiddled with the handlink once again. "The news stories that Ziggy accessed said that from what the rescuers could figure, they weren't that far from TommyLee but he never called out to them." He looked up to meet Sam's gaze. "Have you tried calling out for anyone?"

Sam gave a short nod. It was getting harder and harder for him to control his shivering. "Yeah, a couple of times. I don't care what those news reports said about rescuers. There's no one around here."

"Well, try again, Sam," Al encouraged. "Maybe they just weren't close by when you tried before but they'll hear you now."

Sam looked doubtful that anyone would hear him but he sucked in a deep breath and bellowed out "Help!" as loudly as he could. Unlike the previous two times, this time there was a response, though not what either man had hoped for. They heard a dog start barking, the barking getting closer until a golden retriever finally appeared.

The dog cautiously approached the two strange men. She pawed at the place where Al should have been before backing up and whining when her paw went right through him. The handlink Al was holding on to began to squeal as soon as the dog came into view.

Al looked down to the handlink banging it to see just what the problem was. "Oh, hey, Sam. Ziggy says this is TommyLee's dog, Bitsy. In the original history she's the one who eventually led the rescuers to where TommyLee's body was found." He looked up to where Sam was huddled against the tree. "Maybe she can help you find your way," he offered hopefully.

Sam looked over to the dog uncertainly. Bitsy didn't seem very sure of Sam and was keeping her distance. "I don't know, Al. Remember, she's not seeing TommyLee, she's seeing me. I don't think she trusts me."

"Well, try calling her over and making friends."

Sam looked dubious that making friends with the dog would help his cause but he put his hand out to the dog anyway and called her over. "C'mere, Bitsy. C'mon over girl. I'm not going to hurt you."

Bitsy cocked her head at Sam still unsure about this new human but she did take a couple of tentative steps toward him as he kept calling her name.

"Hey, that's it, Sam," Al encouraged happily. "Keep it up. I think she might like you."

After several more calls, Bitsy finally went over to Sam and let him touch her. He offered the back of his hand to her to sniff and when she seemed to accept that, he patted her softly on her head. "Good girl," he whispered to her.

Bitsy bumped her head into Sam's chest and seemed to sniff the clothes he had on before whining and backing a few steps away in confusion. Sam looked over to Al questioningly wondering what he'd done to the dog.

"Uh, maybe she can still smell TommyLee on the clothes or something and it's confusing her." Al offered helpfully. "Try calling her again."

Again Sam extended his hand to the dog and called to her. "C'mon, Bitsy. I didn't hurt your master. I'm trying to help him but I need you to help me."

Bitsy cocked her head back and forth as she listened to Sam's voice. If Al didn't know better, he would have sworn she understood everything that Sam was saying. After a few more calls she again approached the time traveler and laid her head on his pulled up knees. When she did, Sam rested his arm across her back and buried his chilled fingers in her soft, warm fur.

"Ok. Now what?" Sam asked looking over to Al expectantly. A violent shiver made his whole body shudder and dislodged Bitsy's head for its resting place. She bumped her muzzled against Sam's cheek and tentatively licked it.

"Now we need to get you someplace where you're not out here in the elements like this."

As soon as the words left Al's mouth Sam started shaking his head back and forth. "No way, Al. The first rule to survival training is not to keep wandering around if you get lost in the woods. You're supposed to stay in one place so it's easier for rescuers to find you. I start wandering around these woods and I'll end up making it that much harder for rescuers to find TommyLee…to find me before it's too late."

"I know all that, Sam. Trust me. You can't just keep sitting out here like this, though. The temperature's going to drop as night falls and you're still all wet. You need to get someplace where you can be warmer otherwise it's not going to matter when you're found." Al looked imploringly at Sam. "Please, Kid, you've got believe me on this. You need to get up and start moving."

Sam looked around him but all he could see in the fading light was trees and the creek a few yards off. "Where do I go, Al? Tell me where to go and I'll go." He stopped as an idea occurred to him. "Hey, can't you get Ziggy to lock on to the rescue party and then just lead me to them. Geez, why didn't we think of this before?"

Again Al consulted the handlink shaking it and banging it when it didn't give him the answers he wanted. He closed his eyes briefly before answering Sam's question. "Ziggy can't lock onto anyone else. She says since she doesn't know who to look for and she doesn't know where to look." He felt like such a heel when he saw how the eagerness dropped away from Sam's face. "Looks like we're on our own."

"I don't suppose Ziggy knows where TommyLee's grandparents live?" Sam asked but there wasn't much hope in his voice.

"It's too far. TommyLee wandered a good ways away before you leaped in. You'd never make it before you froze." Al stood up and looked at the surrounding woods. "You need to find some kind of shelter to hold you over 'til morning when the rescuers find you." Al bit his lower lip and looked around at the woods surrounding them before looking back to Sam. "You stay put and I'll see what I can find."

Sam gave a short nod. "Not going anywhere." He sighed when Al winked out of existence and wrapped his arms around the dog. "Guess it's just you and me for now, huh, Bitsy?" In answer, Bitsy whined and nudged his chest with her head. "I hate being alone," he told the dog.

Five minutes later, Al reappeared. "I think I found something," he reported. "I wouldn't exactly call it a cave or anything but at least it'll get you out of the wind." Before either Al or Sam could say anything else, the wind picked up yet again except this time there were also droplets of rain. "…and the rain," Al finished off with a sigh.

Sam climbed stiffly to his feet. The jeans, shoes and socks that he had were still wet from his dip in the creek and he was really starting to feel the cold. "Which way?" he asked looking around hesitantly.

Al pointed off to Sam's right. "It's not too far over there. I'll lead you."

Nodding his agreement, Sam began to follow his hologram. "C'mon, girl," he called back when he didn't notice Bitsy following him. The dog cocked her head and again Al had the feeling that she understood Sam. With a short bark, she followed them in the direction of the promised shelter.

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What had taken Al only five minutes to find with Ziggy's help took Sam nearly 15 minutes to walk to - fifteen minutes of walking in the cold wind and light rain that had begun fall. By the time Al called a halt to their tramp through the woods, constant shivers were running through Sam's body causing it to quake. At least the rain had held off with only a few drops falling during the walk.

"Here, right here, Sam." Al pointed to a small, shallow opening in the rock face. He had been right; it really couldn't rightly be called a cave.

Sam didn't seem to care what it should or shouldn't be called. He dropped down to his hands and knees and crawled through the opening. The space opened up just a little behind the opening, but not much. There was just enough room for him to sit with his back pressed against the rock wall and legs crossed in front of him. He was out of the wind and the rain, though and that counted for something.

As soon as Sam had situated himself, Bitsy trotted in after him. She made herself comfortable in his lap and he gratefully wrapped his arms around her burying his cold fingers in her soft, warm fur.

Al dropped down to sit at the mouth of small area that Sam huddled into. The dim glow of the handlink provided the only light. "This is cozy, huh?" Al asked with a fake smile on his face.

"Oh yeah, real cozy," Sam agreed. His voice was tight with suppressed chills. "How much longer until the rescue party shows up?"

Al looked down to the handlink for the answer. When it came, he winced as he looked up at Sam and reported, "eleven hours. You just need to hang on for eleven hours."

"Eleven hours!" In his shock Sam forgot the small space he was in and bolted up straight, hitting his head off the low ceiling of his hidey-hole. Rubbing his head from where it had struck the rock, Sam slumped back down. "How am I supposed to wait eleven hours?" he asked. "I'm cold and there's no way I can make a fire. I'm lost out here by myself and you're telling me it's going to take eleven hours." He buried his face in his hand. "I can't do it, Al. I just can't."

"You have to do it," the observer returned firmly. "You have no choice."

"Choice," Sam scoffed. "When was the last time I got a choice in anything? I'm tired, Al. I'm tired of all of this. I'm tired of having no choice. I'm tired of being someone's last hope." He leaned his head back against the rock wall looking up to the low ceiling overhead. His voice dropped low, full of despondency. "I'm tired of not having a life anymore. I just want to go home."

"I know, Kid. I know." It wasn't the first time Sam had expressed those same desires and Al knew it wouldn't be the last time he'd hear them either. He just wished he had words to offer that would somehow make it all easier for Sam.

What he did know was that there was no way he could relate to Sam the information that had just popped up on the handlink. Thankfully Ziggy had had whatever sense a computer has not to squeal or squeak to call his…and Sam's…attention to it. The absolute last thing that the despondent man needed to know right now was that this hole in the rock face, this shelter that Al had found for him was the same exact one that TommyLee had been found dead in in the original history.

The difference this time, Al firmly thought, was that unlike TommyLee, Sam wasn't alone. He had Bitsy who'd be able to provide Sam the heat of her body…and he had Al. There was no way in hell Al planned on leaving Sam alone for one second of what was looking to be a long night.

For a few minutes the only sound heard was the dripping of the rain outside Sam's shelter and the sound of breathing within it. Eventually Sam lifted his head away from the wall, a quizzical look on his face. "If the rescuers were close to TommyLee, he must have heard them. Why didn't he call out to them?"

"Good question, I'll see what Ziggy says." Al had to hide the smile that was trying to break out on his face. No matter how dire his own circumstances might be, there was just no way Sam could get his active mind to stop questioning. Al knew that would go in Sam's favor. As long as his mind was working, he'd keep fighting.

"Well, according to what Ziggy can pull up it says here that TommyLee has aspera…aspara…"he gently slapped the side of the small computer. "…Asparagus Syndrome. Asparagus Syndrome?" He shrugged off the oddity of the name and continued. "Anyway, I guess because of it he was really uneasy around strangers so he just never called out."

"Asparagus Syndrome?" Sam kept softy repeating. "What the heck is that?" He thought for another moment before his eyes seemed to light up with knowledge. "Do you mean Asperger's Syndrome?"

Again Al consulted the handlink. "Oh, yeah. I guess you're right. What's that got to do with him not liking strangers and not calling out for help?"

"He probably couldn't because of the Asperger's."

"What? You mean like it made him mute or something."

Sam rapidly shook his head in disagreement. "No, not mute. Asperger's Syndrome is a form of Autism. One of the symptoms of it is an inability to interact with others normally…or what passes as normal for just about everyone else. It could be that TommyLee heard the rescuers but in his own, unique way he just didn't know to call out to them to come get him."

Al shook his head. "Poor kid. If he'd only known. Help was so close to him."

Sam seemed to get a far away look in his eyes then and let out a humorless chuckle.

"What's so funny," Al asked.

Unconsciously, Sam pulled Bitsy in closer to him hunching down into her warmth. "I just remembered. There was this one behavioral specialist that I saw when I was a kid, I think I was 10. Anyway, he was convinced that I had Asperger's Syndrome and that explained why I was so different form every other kid my age." Sam let out another short laugh, this time with more humor to it. "My Dad told him what he thought of that assessment and I never saw the guy again."

"Why the hell would he think that about you?" To Al's mind it didn't make sense that anyone would ever think of Sam as having some type of deficit.

"You gotta understand, at that point Asperger's was still fairly new. It had only been…discovered, I guess you could say, as an actual syndrome about 20 years before. Hell, it wasn't until recently that real diagnosis of it have been made. I'm guessing that guy must have just read about it or something and when he saw me, maybe he thought he'd get written up or something for the diagnosis." Sam became quiet for a moment and when he spoke again, it was with a thoughtful tone. "You know, come to think of it, I can sort of see where he was getting it. I did meet some of the criteria when I was 10. I wasn't exactly at the same social level as the rest of my peers, I was a bit of a klutz, I had an eidetic memory, and my vocabulary was way beyond what everyone else's was. Of course, that's just looking at surface things and generalities."

Al took in all that Sam told him but latched onto one thing. "You, a klutz? C'mon, I can't see that."

Sam let out a rueful chuckle. "That's because you didn't know me between the ages of 9 and 11. Sometimes I couldn't walk two yards without tripping over my own two feet. I was constantly tripping and falling and banging into things. It's a wonder no one ever accused mom or dad of abusing me."

"I guess you grew out of that," Al observed.

"Yeah, I did. Dad enrolled me in a martial arts class and I guess that helped me get a little more coordinated." Another shiver rippled through Sam's body. "How much longer, Al?"

Looking down at the information on the handlink, Al frowned and shook his head at Sam. "You still got a ways to go, Kid."

Silently, Sam nodded his head and steeled his face to one of resolution.


	2. Chapter 2

As the long night dragged by, Sam started to recount to Al more and more incidents from his childhood. Most of them were memories that he'd lost during his leaps due to the swiss-cheesing of his memory but for some reason they seemed to come flooding back to him on this leap. Although a lot of incidents that Sam recalled Al already knew about, he still let Sam talk on, sometimes prompting him when the younger man seemed to lose some small part of a memory. As long as Sam was awake and talking, Al reasoned, he was alive and the chances of him getting through this leap that way were greater. He hadn't bothered to check any of the odds from Ziggy to see just what the likelihood of Sam getting out of this was. If the odds were poor, Sam didn't need to know it – and neither did he.

It was nearly 3:00 in the morning, with at least another 2 hours to go before rescue when Sam seemed to start to give up. He was telling Al a story about the swimming hole on the farm when he stopped in the middle of a word and just silently stared at Al's face.

"What is it, Sam? What's the matter?" Al prompted.

"I don't want to die like this." Sam's voice was barely above a whisper and Al couldn't remember hearing such fear in it before, even during some of the worst leaps.

"You're not going to die, Sam. You just need to hang on a couple of more hours and you're home free. That's all."

Al's words, no matter how conciliatory, had no effect on Sam if he even heard them. "I don't want to die alone. I don't want to die like this with no one here."

"You're not alone, Sam." Al didn't bother to address Sam's fear of dying since he didn't appear to be listening. Instead, he concentrated on getting the younger man to understand that he wasn't alone and Al wouldn't leave him alone. "I'm here, Sam. I'm not going to leave you alone."

There was a catch to Sam's voice when he continued. "But you're not here. You just look like you're here." As if to prove his point, Sam passed his hand through Al's body. "See, it's just a trick of shadow and light. We can't touch. I'm by myself."

Al looked down to his lap and pulled in a deep breath. He could never tell Sam how much it hurt him how they were separated by time. So many times on Sam's leaps, he'd wanted to do nothing more than to touch the younger man. To rest a hand on his shoulder, to reassure him, to high-five him for a job well done, to comfort his hurts, or, now, to bring warmth to him on this long and cold night; they were all physical actions all wished he could do. They were forbidden that, though. They were only allowed sight and hearing. He drew in another deep breath and raised his head to meet Sam's gaze head on. If all they were allowed was sight and hearing, he was going to damn-well make use of it.

"I might not be present physically for you Sam, but I am here." He saw how Sam's eyes seemed to shutter, how he looked to be closing himself off. "Don't you dare give up on me, damn it! I have not been watching you leap and escape everything under the sun by the skin of your teeth just for you to give up now. Do you hear me?"

"I'm tired, Al," Sam breathed out. "I'm just so tired…and cold. I just want to sleep – just for a little while."

"No! Don't you dare go to sleep!" Al cried. Almost in defiance of Al's words, Sam's eyes closed and his chin dropped down to his chest. In his lap, Bitsy whine. "Sa-am! You listen to me damn it. You open your eyes and you open them now." Not getting the response he wanted from Sam, Al sucked in a deep breath. "Samuel Beckett, wake up now. That's an order," he bellowed.

Groggily Sam leaned his head back and blinked his eyes open. "Stop yelling, Al. I want to sleep."

Al crawled as close as he could to Sam without dissolving into him and captured his gaze. "You can't go to sleep. If you do, you're going to freeze to death. To death, Sam. If you sleep, you'll die."

Finally, Al's words penetrated through to Sam. Convulsively he wrapped his arms around Bitsy. "I don't want to die," he whispered fearfully. "Please don't let me."

Al sighed in relief and sat back away from Sam. "I'm not going to let you but you need to help, you hear me? The first thing you need to do is not go to sleep."

Sam scrubbed a hand over his face blinking rapidly and forcing his eyes open as wide as he could. "But I'm so tired, Al. I don't know what to do to stay awake."

Al was desperate. He was desperate to do anything that would keep Sam awake because keeping him awake meant keeping him alive. He realized that if Sam were talking, that meant he was awake. "The same thing you've been doing, Sam. Tell me what it was like to grow up on a farm in Indiana. Finish telling me about the swimming hole."

"The swimming hole?" Confusion was starting to set in as the cold and damp affected Sam more and more.

"Yeah, the swimming hole on the farm. You were telling me about the time Tom taught you to swim there. Tell me what happened."

Sam smiled gently as the memory came back to him. "He threw me in. I was five years old and didn't know how to swim worth a damn but that didn't stop him from picking me up and throwing me in."

"And…" Al prompted. "What happened after he threw you in?"

Sam shrugged lazily and hunched down closer to the warmth of the dog's body. "You know, I panicked. I didn't know what to do and the water was going over my head. I thought I was going to drown."

"But you didn't. Why? What did Tom do?" Al asked the questions in a barrage. Anything to keep Sam awake and aware.

"He had to fish me out. When Dad found out he threatened to tan his hide but I begged Dad not to." A small laugh escaped from Sam. "I was scared as hell but somehow I seemed to enjoy it. I guess I knew Tom wouldn't let anything happen to me." Sam looked speculatively at Al through narrowed eyes. "The two of you are a lot alike. You don't let anything happen to me either."

Al tried to shrug off Sam's words. "Yeah, well, I try not to." Not wanting to get into a discussion of feelings, mushy stuff as he called it, Al quickly changed the subject. "Tell me more about when you were a kid. Did you ever go to county fairs and stuff like that?"

Al kept Sam talking for the next hour and a half even though after a while most of what the younger man was saying wasn't making a tremendous amount of sense. The fact that he was still awake and still alive was all that really mattered. His condition was deteriorating fast, though. Al could see that. The night spent out in nearly freezing temperatures with only damp clothes and a dog for warmth was fast taking its toll. If help didn't come soon, Al didn't see anyway that Sam could right this wrong.

He'd just gotten Sam to start in on the tale of his Tarzan escapade in the barn when Al thought he heard a noise. Very faintly, it sounded like someone calling out for TommyLee. "Shush, Sam. Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Sam asked looking around his small space lazily. "I don't hear nothin'. It's just the wind blowin' in the trees."

"No it isn't. Not unless the wind knows what TommyLee's name is." To prove Al's point, the noise came again and this time Bitsy raised her head whining at the noise. "See, she hears it to." Picking up the handlink from his lap, he punched the colorful lights. "Center me in on whoever that is," he ordered. Within seconds, he winked from existence.

"No," Sam cried out when Al vanished. "Al! Don't leave me alone. Come back." He tried to unfold himself and crawl out of the small area he was in but his legs had cramped up over the long cold night. He only succeeded in flopping forward onto his stomach. "He left me alone," he moaned as Bitsy licked at his cheek.

Minutes later, although it felt like a lifetime to Sam, Al reappeared jumping up and down in excitement. "Sam, they're hear. The rescue party's here. They're just a little ways off. If you call out to them, they'll hear you. Sa-am!"

Sam was too far gone to understand what Al was telling him to do and lacked the energy necessary to do more than moan softly. Realizing his friend had very little time before he'd meet the same fate as TommyLee, Al turned to the only other being who could possibly help – Bitsy.

"Oh girl, I don't know if you can understand me or not but you gotta help Sam. You gotta bring those men here or he's going to die and if he does, you'll never see TommyLee again. C'mon Bitsy, I know you're hearing them too. C'mon, do a Lassie impression and go get them."

As Al talked, Bitsy cocked her head back and forth again giving the impression that she was listening. Finally, she let out a bark before bounding off into the woods. Al could only hope she would find the rescue party and bring them to Sam and not that she was going off in search of the perfect tree as she'd done a couple of times during the night.

Al sat by Sam for the next 30 minutes imploring him to get up and talk to him. The only response he got from Sam were bits and pieces of whispered nonsense. As he sat, he listened intently for any sound of Bitsy or the rescue party. His patience was rewarded after a half hour when he again heard the dog's barking growing closer as well as the sound of voices.

"Sam! Sam!" he called out joyously as he again tried to rouse his friend. "She did it. Bitsy did it. I can hear her and the rescuers getting closer. Just hang on a few more minutes. That's all just a few more minutes and everything will be fine. TommyLee will be safe and you'll leap out of here."

A ghost of smile flitted across Sam's face. "Go home," he breathed out as his eyes drifted closed.

"No," Al screamed out at him. "Open your damned eyes. Don't you dare go to sleep."

As Al fought with Sam to wake up, Bitsy and two men burst through the trees.

"Hey, there he is," one of the rescuers, a big burly man, called out before loping over to where Sam lay. He reached a hand out and laid his fingers on Sam's neck. "He's alive but he's really cold."

The feel of human fingers on his neck reached Sam where Al's voice hadn't. His eyes slitted open and he looked up at the face hovering over his. "You're not Al," he breathed out softly.

"Oh, thank God you're awake, Sam" Al murmured from where he knelt by Sam's side as soon as he heard Sam's voice.

The man, unaware of Al's presence, laughed softly. "Don't know who Al is but I'm not him, Little Buddy. My name's Bob and that's my friend Jim. We're gonna get you warmed up and back with your folks. How's that sound?"

Sam didn't answer the man. He just looked up at him with big, glassy eyes and nodded his head. While Jim radioed in that they'd found the missing child, Bob pulled a silvery colored thermal blanket out of the bag he was carrying and wrapped it around Sam. He kept up a constant stream of conversation while he did so. "You know, if it weren't for that there dog of yours, we probably never would have found you. You're one lucky little man."

"You sure are, Sam," Al added in agreement as he consulted the handlink. Looks like everything works out fine now. TommyLee spends the night in the hospital to make sure he's ok and then he goes home with his parents. You did it, Buddy."

At Al's words, Bitsy barked to get his attention. "Well, ok, you did it too," Al told the dog.

Once Sam was wrapped up, Bob lifted him up cradling him easily to his chest and showing no sign of the fact that he was actually lifting a grown man.

"Can I go home now?" Sam queried softy, his eyes on Al.

Not realizing to whom Sam was talking, Bob answered his question. "You'll have to get checked out by the docs but I see no reason why you won't be home in no time."

It was Al's voice which overrode Bob's that Sam concentrated on. "Soon, Kid," Al assured unable to meet the pleading gaze Sam gave him. "You'll be home soon."

As he said the words, a blue-white corona of light began to surround Sam and he leaped. As the forest he'd been in faded around him leaving only the blue walls of the Imaging Chamber, Al looked up, his reassurance becoming a prayer. "Please, let him come home soon."


End file.
